FICPI at ICANN64 Public Meeting in Kobe

01st April, 2019

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), an internationally organized, non-profit corporation that has responsibility for Internet Protocol (IP) address space allocation, generic (gTLD) and country code (ccTLD) Top-Level Domain name system management, and root server system management functions, held its 64th public meeting in Kobe, Japan, on March 9 – 14, 2019.

FICPI was represented by Petter Rindforth, CET Special Reporter (ICANN).

This Community Forum was, like the previous 63rd public meeting in Barcelona, Spain, October 2018, focused on the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) that came into effect on May 25, 2018, and its impact on WHOIS Data Access.

ICANN has now come closer to a solution, which will allow lawyers and other groups of legal interest access to the information on who is the holder of a specific domain name, without the risk of misusing the identification of physical person’s identity on the Internet.

It is suggested that the European data protection authorities (DPAs) identifies organizations whose Codes of Conduct are approved by DPA, to be registered by ICANN and thereby get credentials for validation and log in credentials for topics related to: Law enforcement, consumer protection, cyber security, IP protection, and child welfare.

FICPI has been actively involved in this work, via its membership in the Intellectual Property Constituency (IPC). It is now up to DPAs to give ICANN positive feedback and identification of the accepted organizations. Members of the IPC – including FICPI – are indeed such organizations that should be considered as accepted to receive such information!

Other news is that the Governmental Advisory Committee recommended the ICANN Board to reinstate the working group for IGO-INGO Access to Curative Rights Protection Mechanisms. This working group tries to deal with the issue of how to handle International Governmental Organizations (IGOs) jurisdictional immunity where a registrant who has lost a domain dispute (such as UDRP or URS proceeding) against an IGO proceeds to file a court claim against that IGO. Petter Rindforth has been the chair of this working group since it started in 2014 and presented its report to the ICANN Board last year.